About Us
Teenagers are growing up in a globalized world with people from different cultures and different national, ethnic, racial, religious, and social-economic backgrounds in their study, work, and living environments.
Intercultural competence, communication, and compassion are crucial to navigating such complexity. To develop the skills and attitudes needed to successfully engage in intercultural environments, teenagers have to be exposed to information and knowledge about other cultures.
Culturous provides an increased level of access, affordability, and convenience for cultural exchange and personal development for teenagers across the world. Our participants are developing understanding and compassion for other cultures and are building future-orientated skills as well as meaningful connections.
Our Vision and Mission
Our Vision:
We are helping global teenagers to develop into engaged and active young global citizens who successfully navigate the globalized world with cross-cultural competence, communication, and compassion.
Our Mission:
To provide teenagers from around the world the opportunity to exchange culture, build meaningful connections, and develop compassion through virtual cultural exchange.
Our Values
The Culturous community reflects the richness of cultural and social diversity. We welcome and value individuals from all different cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, races, abilities, religions, socio-economic statuses, sexual orientations, gender identities, and life experiences.
We believe that:
Each individual is unique and equally valuable
Every person has their very own set of cultural, social, and educational backgrounds, personality traits, and individual experiences
People have different mindsets, values, and perspectives as the foundation of their actions
We operate from compassion and empathy, and approach differences with open-mindedness, dialogue, patience, and active listening
Our goal is not to convince but to understand
We stand for diversity, inclusion, and social and economic equity. We, as an organization, understand our position of privilege in these contexts and are actively using it to provide opportunities, accessibility, and affordability, especially for youth from historically underserved and marginalized communities worldwide.
We commit to becoming an anti-racist organization by creating an internal culture that values our collective and individual humanity and promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion. Becoming that organization will be a continually evolving process and will include to regularly evaluating our progress and policies and making changes when necessary.